Au Decorated WO3-X Nanoflake Arrays Used As Photoelectrochemical Detection and Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering

Abstract

The increasing of environment organic pollution in water body is calling for the development of high efficient sensors for fast and stable monitoring. Herein, a new Au decorated WO3-x nanoflake arrays sensor combined photoelectrochemical detection with surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) was proposed, in which self-doped tungsten trioxide (WO3-x) nanoflake arrays were synthesized by dealloying of Fe-W amorphous alloy and thermal treatment, following by surface decoration of sputtering Au nanoparticles. The effect of size and distribution of gold particles on the photocatalytic degradation of WO3-x was investigated. It was found that the annealing temperature plays an important role in the growth of gold particles, the optimal size is about 10nm (annealing temperature was 400 ℃); photoelectrochemical test revealed that the current density was positively correlated with the pollutant concentration with the detect limit of 10-9 mol/L; at the same time, these functional nanoflake arrays showed high sensitivity for R6G (10-8mol/L) in Raman spectrum detection. We believe that this technique will have a great prospect for qualitative and quantitative analysis of environmental pollutants.